Participants

Frank Ferguson is the editor of Ulster-Scots Writing, An Anthology. He will discuss the concept of Ulster-Scots literature and language and its place within Irish, British and American literature.

George Garrett, author of Days of Our Lives Lie in Fragments, is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing Emeritus at UVa. Author of 32 books and editor or co-author of 19 others, he served as Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2004.

Barbara Hamby's Babel, won the 2003 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her first book, Delirium, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The New York Public Library named her second book, The Alphabet of Desire, among the 25 best books of 1999. She teaches at Florida State University.

Kendra Hamilton's first collection of poetry is The Goddess of Gumbo. She is an M.F.A. poetry graduate of Louisiana State University and published in Callaloo, Southern Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, and anthologized in The Ringing Ear:  Black Poets Lean South, and Letters from the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv.

James Hoch is the author of Miscreants. His poems have appeared in Slate, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg and Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2007 he received an NEA fellowship. He teaches at Ramapo College of NJ and resides in Nyack, NY.

David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University and the author of two new books, The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems and Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa Of Avila, And 17 Other Colossal Topics of Conversation.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda is Virginia’s current Poet Laureate and an award-winning educator. She has published five books of poetry (including her latest, River Country), and she was named a Virginia Cultural Laureate for her contributions to American literature.

Jeanne Larsen, author of three acclaimed historical novels set in China (Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, Manchu Palaces), has just published her second book of translated poems from the golden age that first called her to study China's language and literature.

Sharon Leiter's most recent book of poetry is The Dream of Leaving. Her A Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to her Life and Work was published in 2006. She is also the author of The Lady and the Bailiff of Time and Akhmatova's Petersburg.

Jeb Livingood teaches at UVa where he serves as faculty advisor for the literary magazine Meridian and series editor for Best New Poets, an annual anthology featuring work of 50 emerging poets selected from nominations by writing programs, literary magazines, and an open internet competition.

Natalie Lyalin lives and teaches in Philadelphia. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Glitterpony magazine. Her most recent work has appeared in Best New Poets 2007, Skein, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and she has work forthcoming in Invisible Ear.

Charlotte Matthews, author of Green Stars, received the 2007 New Writing Award from the Fellowship for Southern Writers. Her second collection is Still Enough to Be Dreaming.

Kevin McFadden, author of the VQR Poetry Series selection Hardscrabble, has published poems in Poetry, Verse, The Kenyon Review, and Denver Quarterly. He is the Associate Program Director of the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Heather McHugh is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Eyeshot and Hinge & Sign. Editor of Best American Poetry 2007 and recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, she teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle and at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Tyler Mills appears in Best New Poets 2007. Winner of the 2006 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, she has been published in the Indiana Review and has been a John Woods Fellow in the Prague Summer Program. She lives in Maryland.